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Rob van Nes, International Business Development Head, One Million Hockey Legs (OMHL) visited Anantapur Sports Academy (ASA) to meet Program Director Moncho Ferrer and other hockey officials to oversee and strengthen their partnership with the ASA Hockey Program.

The One Million Hockey Legs project started back in 2015 with the likes of Floris Jan Bovelander and other Olympians on its executive board. It aims to reach one million young hockey players by 2018 Hockey World Cup to be held in Bhubaneswar, India and increase the participation of rural youth by providing them with necessary training. With this aim, they collaborated with ASA which has a long history of promoting hockey in Anantapur district, Andhra Pradesh. OMHL wants to leave its impression in the Indian hockey legacy and strengthen the relationship between India and Netherlands.

“India can be world champion any day. We need to start from every home as parents need to understand the importance of sports; sports and education can go hand in hand. The skills like team spirit, hard work, communication can be learnt from sports which goes a long way in life”, says Rob van Nes.

Coach education is an important aspect of sport development, as to have a wider impact, the dissemination of knowledge of the game among the grassroots is essential. Many places in India lack infrastructural and up-to-date coach education at local and regional grassroots level which has decreased the number of children playing hockey. India with its 1.3 billion population has only 50,000 hockey players left whereas Netherlands, much smaller in population, has 2.5 lakh players.

“ASA has been promoting sports for many years and is providing good training cum residential facilities for talented athletes. I feel happy to be a part of this project and to help in the promotion of hockey in Anantapur. Wisse and Roderique, the trainers from OMHL who were in ASA in January 2017 for training were surprised to see the vigor and talent ASA hockey players possessed. Other OMHL partners in Jamshedpur, Delhi and Punjab are also doing quite well. Our aim is to spread the hockey culture in the grassroots and simultaneously provide high performance training to athletes who are doing well”, says Rob van Nes.

Vijay Babu, Secretary of Hockey Anantapur said, “ASA plans to conduct a hockey festival/championship in partnership with One Million Hockey Legs with the objective of increasing the participation in rural Anantapur as well as providing with high performance training to boys and girls of the academy”.

India were the first host nation to win the Hockey Junior World Cup 2016 and a little over a year from now, Odisha would host the 14th edition of the Men’s Hockey World Cup. It would be interesting to see how Indian hockey team performs in the World Cup. OMHL’s effort towards developing the sport at the grassroots will go a long way in helping to achieve results at the international level in the future

Anantapur finally managed to see some showers ahead of the 8th Father Vincent Ferrer Memorial Hockey Championship 2016. Resultantly experiencing pleasant weather to welcome the championship that would celebrate 10 years of Rural Development Trust’s (RDT)Anantapur Sports Academy (ASA) Hockey Academy. Celebrations that marked 10 years of the ASA Hockey Academy’s promoting India’s national sport among the rural youth to educate and develop them and affect a sporting cultural change in the region.

Teams arrived at the Anantapur Sports Village (ASV) on the 3rd June 2016 and got down to acclimatizing to the relatively warmer weather of Anantapur despite the rains. The tournament took shape with 14 teams, around 230 of the finest athletes in South India contesting for the honour of having the Father Vincent Ferrer Memorial Hockey Championship trophy don their cabinets.

The championship began with RDT Executive Director, Anne Ferrer encouraging the young athletes with warm words and later declaring the championship open on the evening of the 4th June 2016. This marked the beginning of the league stages of the championship.

The championship followed a league cum knockout structure with both the boys and girls split into two pools. Each team would play their pool contenders once with the top two teams in each pool advancing to the semi-finals where they would face-off in a knockout setting to make their way to the trophy.

Images from the action packed League stages

The league stages came off quite hard fought, with quite a few of the games going down to the wire, being decided in the dying minutes. The boys’ competition came through after some intense games with the semi-finals eventually seeing R.V. Academy and RDT Dharmavaram from Pool A and ASA Hockey Academy and JFHA Bangalore from Pool B, whereas the girls’ competition saw DYSS Mysore and RGV Kovilpatti from Pool A and ASA Hockey Academy and GVGW Udumalpet from Pool B.

A tooth and nail effort saw RDT Dharmavaram and JFHA end the first semi-final with 3 goals each. Nerves were tested as the teams took to a nail biting shoot-out. Where both teams drew again at 3 a piece in their stipulated 5 shootouts going into sudden death for a result. JFHA goalkeeper fouled Dharmavaram player in his sudden death shootout attempt leading to a penalty stroke, later silencing the supporting Anantapur crowd to take the JFHA boys to the final with a 2-1 sudden death score to play the hosts ASA Hockey Academy who convincingly defeated RV Academy 3-0 in their semi-final. The ASA Hockey Academy girls controlled every moment of their 8-1 semi-final win over RGV Kovilpatti while DYSS Mysore managed a 3-0 win over GVGW Udumalpet to arrive into the finals.

The finals were decided with overwhelming wins. The Boys final saw hosts ASA Hockey Academy dominate proceedings right from the start to beat JFHA 5-0. While the girls competition closed as ASA Hockey Academy went into half time being one goal down, eventually conceding two more for a 3-0 scoreline losing to DYSS Mysore.

Shots from the Finals

Hockey Anantapur Secretary M H Vijayababu shared, “We have grown greatly throughout this eventful decade with just one hockey summer camp organized with Spanish players Andreu Enrich and Santi Freixa back in 2006 to now having close to 1700 children play hockey throughout the district. As for our teams in the championship, it was only a matter of experience that made the difference. Our boys have been in the academy for a couple of years now and their teams had some favourable playing time before this championship at national level tournaments in Nagpur and Kovilpatti. Most of the girls however have been with the academy only this year and are relatively inexperienced, but have played exceptionally to reach the finals and their performance despite the lack of experience was fulfilling. We only look forward to having a more competitive infrastructure for the future, continue to grow and develop these children and more throughout the hockey program with more of them being able to secure jobs through their influence on the field much like many of their predecessors who now serve in the Police, the Army and as PE Teachers”

Bangalore, 10 Nov, 2013: RDT High School for Inclusive Education, Anantapur successfully defended their title of JFHA Inter-School Hockey Tournament by defeating Sports School Kudige in the final of Dreamworld India – JFHA Inter-School Hockey Tournament 2013 by 3-2 played tonight here at KSHA Hockey Stadium under floodlights.

In the final match, Siva of RDT, scored in 3rd minute to take early lead which lasted till the half time. The Sports School Kudige came back in the game quickly after the change of ends and scored an early goal in 2nd half to equalize. The equalizing goal came through Carriappa MB, when he scored off a penalty corner in very first minute of 2nd half. Continue reading →

After 2 editions of trend-setting and world-class hockey tournament for school kids, the 3rd edition of the JFHA Inter-School Hockey Tournament is all set to start from 7th November. The tournament will be inaugurated by Most Rev. Dr. Bernard Moras, Archbishop of Bangalore, at 4:30 PM at KSHA Hockey Stadium, Langford Town, Bangalore.

The 3rd edition of this inter-school hockey tournament, organised by Jude Felix Hockey Academy (JFHA), is called Dreamworld India – JFHA Inter-School Hockey Tournament 2013 as “Dreamworld India” has come on board with JFHA as the title sponsor of the tournament for this year. Maths Creation Centre is the co-sponsor of the tournament and MJ Maths is associate sponsor. As it was in last two edition, this edition will also be played in international standard environment including floodlights. Continue reading →

Dreamworld India will be the title sponsor of the 2013 edition of the tournament which will be played under floodlights at the KSHA Hockey Stadium, Langford Town, Bangalore. Dreamworld India – JFHA Inter-School Hockey Tournament 2013, is co-sponsored by Maths Creation Centre, in association with MJ Maths.

JFHA with its vision and focus to reach out sports to all sectors of the society has partnered with “CHAMPION IN ME – RED RIBBON REVOLUTION“ taking the lead to be the Global voice for children and youth living with HIV/AIDS and the Dreamworld India – JFHA Inter-School Hockey tournament will played in aid to create awareness and spread the message to eradicate stigma and discrimination among children and youth living with HIV/AIDS and bring them to the mainstream. Continue reading →

Jude Felix Hockey Academy (JFHA) is organizing summer camp from 7th-21st April and 4th-18th May 2013. The camp is open for all irrespective of skills or age, but there will be separate training groups based on skills and age.

Fitness is of prime importance, so the warm down, P Shanmugham observing the kids

Guest instructors, including current and former international players and Olympians like Dhanraj Pillay, Arjun Halappa, Lehnn Aiyappa, Vinaya VS and others, will join the JFHA Coaching Staff headed byOlympian Jude Felix in training the athletes at the camp.

Giving is ‘fun’da

Why: We, at JFHA, believe in giving. And what better way to do that, than to reach out all, as a way to give back something to society through what we know best… HOCKEY. Continue reading →